New SPL Meter - interesting findings!

[Parrot]

Interesting, Triceratops. Thanks.

There is a big difference between listening to music with huge peaks that last milliseconds and listening to non-stop blastingly loud music. And even with constant loud music, few people listen like that for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. It's people's work environments that expose them to the really dangerous noise. And any reputable company won't expose itself to lawsuits anymore--safety managers will make their workers use ear protection. It was a much bigger problem generations ago with people running presses in automobile manufacturing, stuff like that, with no ear plugs, no ear covers.

[sheltie dave]

Safety is one of the hats I wear at many of the rad sites I work. Believe it or not, hearing conservation and hearing awareness is probably the most important aspect of my job. I would peg 80% of industrial accidents could be assigned to inability to hear directions or impaired hearing due to extreme noise, so I am a MFer for proper hearing safety and noise reduction.

When I eventually get enough $ to have a dedicated SET system, I will pursue reducing environmental noise with similar enthusiasm. Our ability to hear and properly distiguish music is dependant on the relative seperation of signals and the ability to correctly reproduce tone and pitch, three aspects that tubes do better than solid state to varying degree.

For an illustration, assume you have a set of Heresys and a thrity watt syste, and you push some listening to 100 dB(loud.)I have alluded to environmental noise in prior posts, as it can be easier to achieve 5 to 8 dB reduction in noise during a sound room construction than adding 10 dB at the other end, by buying a more powerful system. Cutting 5 dB from environmental noise would drop the background floor to about 25 dB, allowing for 75 dB of "listening headroom" or dynamic range, for this system.

Keeping background noise constant at 30 dB but boosting your amp so you could drive the Heresys to 105 dB output in order to achieve the same level of listening headroom is markedly more difficult. You have three sets of factors working against you -

*a 5 dB gain for 100 to 105 dB would require two amp output doublings, so you now need a 120 watt amplifier

*unless your listening position is only a meter(3 ft) away from the Heresy, you have the inverse square relationship of speaker output requiring even more power

*the louder you are cranking, the less seperation you have re. internal sources in the material, as your ears start compressing or clipping the auditory signals they process. We can overload our ears as easily as we can speakers, even Klipsch

Trying to minimize background noise levels so the usable "listening headroom" is available early in the game aids both SET and PP amp owners. IF you have a choice between two areas of a house, apt, or wherever you live, if all other factors are a wash, put your setup in the quieter room to take full advantage of this better condition. Shoot, our 500 watt McIntosh stereo amp sounded like bird guana on the submarine...I wonder if it was do to the excessive noise?

[Strabo]

I listen the same way also, maybe even quieter. The loud side for me is around 75db with 80db peaks and normal listening is about 68-70dbs.

Part of my problem is my room (10' X 24') though. I'd probably turn it up louder more often but the Forte's start to make the walls resonate at 85dbs. By 91dbs my room is awash with boomy bass.

Oddly, I also used DSOTM for testing room levels. Pushed 105dbs with it once, just for kicks.

This issue is what drove me out of the HT forum. Those guys are nuts with all their talk about watching movies and hitting 115dbs @ 20hz. I can't imagin what kind of room that would take, or how boomy and bad that would sound in my room.

P.S. Yes, I have my sub eq'd to +/-1 from 28 - 80hz in room and it's not used for music.

[triceratops]

Sheltie Dave,

I like the perspective of reducing the background noise in the listening room. My plan is to finish off our garage as a listening room for the Khorns. Any suggestions for information sources about what type of insulation, drywall, etc would be most appropriate from a sound-proofing point of view?

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Best in horns,

triceratops

[sheltie dave]

Triceratops, I am very lucky that our basement is enclosed on three sides by dirt, with the rear being the open walkout. The nearest neighbor is 250 yards away, so there is minimal external environmental noise. Even though we have the furnace and dryer just on the other side of the 5/8" knotty pine plank wall the Khorn abuts, the room is 8 dB quieter than the living room upstairs - with BOTH the furnace and dryer running!

Artto is one of the more knowledgable experts on the forum in re. sound architecture, and he has some great posts in the architecture section of home audio. Once in a while someone posts about isolation transformers and dedicated circuits, which also seem to be good ideas. I really like carpeting as a component for noise reduction.

[mopar dave]

my cornwalls sound best from 90-100db. i like to feel it as well as here it.

[Cut-Throat]

Mopar Dave

"my cornwalls sound best from 90-100db. i like to feel it as well as here it."

It's a good thing that you like to feel music, because if you continue listening at these levels, someday feeling music is all you'll be able to do.

Why people stressing over crossover design, tube brand and cables would abuse their ears, is beyond me. Hearing damage is like smoking damage - it will creep up on you until it's too late to do anything about it!

You hear lots of people here saying "I had my hearing checked and it's fine" - They may be only 39 years old and a statement like that is nonsense. I plan on listening to my stereo until my 70's, 80's and 90's.

You have to protect your hearing today. I would suggest reading up on hearing loss and what sound levels can actually damage your hearing. Not stories from young audiophiles.

The only good side of hearing loss, is that you can probably pick up a pair of Bose 901's for cheap and it will sound just as good to you as a pair of Klipschorns.

[Deang]

http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10625

http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/studentdownloads/DEA350notes/Acoustics/Acoustics3.html

http://www.abelard.org/hear/hear.htm

All right already. I don't think anyone here sits in front of 95db or higher for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time. My "normal" high level listening is 95db, and I might do most of one CD like that at few times a week.

Protect your ears -- BUY A SET AMP!!

[HornPenguin]

I could not resist knowing, so I went down to Radio Shack and purchased an SPL meter. My finding's were that my comfortable listening level is at about 94-96 db, regardless of the music type. I will listen to several CD's at this level and find that it is a sweet spot for my system. I would find it hard to believe that this level would be damaging to the ears. My system is very musical and non-fatiging that level. On occasion I like to go slighly louder to 98 or 100, but most of my listening is at night and I start to wonder about the neighbors.

[triceratops]

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience comparing the older Rat Shack analog unit with the newer digital one? Is the Rives Audio Test CD 2 compatible with the digital unit?

Best in horns,

triceratops

[mike stehr]

"Safety is one of the hats I wear at many of the rad sites I work. Believe it or not, hearing conservation and hearing awareness is probably the most important aspect of my job. I would peg 80% of industrial accidents could be assigned to inability to hear directions or impaired hearing due to extreme noise, so I am a MFer for proper hearing safety and noise reduction."

You need to come to Fairchild and explain this to the clowns who like to run string-trimmers without hearing protection.

I did the same until I was top of bomber alert,(a building covered with grass) when two F-15's or whatever decided to do backburner takeoff from dead stop.

I was 200 yards directly behind them.

I can't say what decibel range this was at, 130+?

It's a nasty drop to your knees kind of loud, where your brain says "Get away!" "Get away!"

A 90 decibel string trimmer now becomes completly drowned.

I wear Ear-Muff's always now, and you get used to it.

You hear things you wouldn't hear without protection.

Once I got used to it, the high frequency pitch the head and string makes with the trimmer in use will drive me nuts. It's so much more comfy with protection.

I ran a CNC punch press for about a year without hearing protection. I got a cold and my left ear got infected. I got over the cold, but I still had hearing loss in the left ear for about a month. It did finally go away, and I started using protection around the punch press.

And never had any problem after that.

I wear hearing protection because of the simple fact that I would rather trash my hearing listening to music on my system over a bunch of industrial noises.

I did measure my listening levels with my cheesy rat shack analog SPL meter with cap mod to extend the poles.

I usually listen on average around 80 to 85 decibels, and on occasion push it up to 90, 95.

(Which most of the higher level SPL is from the subwoofers.)

Take care of your ears. Because like Kevin says, one day you'll find out that your ears will have massive roll-off, and there ain't no going back.

I don't want to my ears roll-off at 10 kHz when I'm in my sixties. But at 14, 15 kHz, roll-off at 39, it looks kinda grim.

But when it comes to concerts, no protection for me!

Well, you gotta beat the piss out of your ears once in awhile!

[Q-Man]

My sweet spot is 19' from my mains. 90 to 94db on average,100 to 104 when I really like a song and I need to feel the music. I always listen with the volume control in one hand and the CD changer in the other. I normally don't like more then 3 songs on any CD. I would probably drive most of you nuts.

[jt1stcav]

When I've listened to my favorite pipe organ recordings with my 200 WPC McIntosh MC7200, I'd drive my Cornwalls to peaks of 115dB @ roughly 20 watts on the Mac's meters (my sweet spot is over 7' from the Cornwalls). That was about as near to "live" levels as I've ever gotten in my small 12' x 13.5' x 8' music room, and bass notes from the lowest octave of an organ's 32' pedal stops are more felt than heard! With my present MC250 I'd say I've reached the same levels at the same amount of power. Last time my hearing was examined, my ears were still fine.

I obviously don't listen to all my classical organ/orchestral, jazz, blues, and classic to industrial rock music this loudly all the time, but I'm sure my listening habits will certainly change when I finally receive my 8 WPC 300B Class A SET amp and I retire my 50 WPC McIntosh. Then again, if my efficient Cornwalls will still allow me to listen to a Bach toccata and fugue to near-live levels with the lil' BEZ tube amp...well then, all the better! But I'm certain my days of nearly 120dB peaks are over!

[3dzapper]

Jim,

You might be suprised at what 8 watts per channel can do!

Rick